


Poison & The Cricket

by theheartchoice



Series: DeanCas | Canon Ficlets [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Brothers, Canon Compliant, Cricket, Gen, Heavy Angst, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Lonely Dean Winchester, Mark of Cain, Motels, Nighttime, Poison, Season/Series 09, Selfless Dean, Suffering Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 06:59:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14231811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theheartchoice/pseuds/theheartchoice
Summary: It's too quiet. Dean can't sleep. The Mark of Cain makes it hard to breathe. But worse than that is the lonely burden he now bears. Worse still, is that the Mark isn't entirely to blame.





	Poison & The Cricket

**Author's Note:**

> Just a **TINY** **canon-compliant** ficlet. I know there's no Cas, but I'm gonna stick it in my **DeanCas | Canon Ficlets** series anyway, so sue me. ~~_I'll probably move it later.._~~
> 
>  
> 
> Set in season 9 after Dean gets the Mark of Cain but is still separated from Sam.

It was too damn quiet. 

If not for the lonely chirp of a dozey cricket, Dean would think the world had been frozen in time and he was somehow the only person, the only creature in all of existence who had been left conscious. 

It was as if the world were under some dark curse (probably his own fault). But the world wasn’t cursed, just sleeping. 

Dean was the cursed one. And he couldn’t sleep.

Everything was still. 

There was no wind, so there felt no air, as if the night were holding its breath until morning. 

Dean’s own breaths came shallow and noisy, but it was noise lost to a vaccuum. And his lungs were heavy with effort, because if the trees themselves were standing still and the clouds were static in the sky and whatever else caused a breeze to budge was taking five ( _minutes, hours, millennia.._ ) then he was the only thing in reality stirring the air—and that was quite a burden.

The goddamn rush of traffic from nearby highways and byways was absent. Even the gentle buzz of neon or muffled chug of the AC from neighbouring rooms was silent. 

And there were no familiar snores from his brother, no steady ebb and flow of that sleepy  _inhale/exhale_  from the bed beside him. 

He missed that overgrown jerk..

He missed just being able to breathe easy, in and out, and in again.. Though maybe he never knew how that really felt—not like others knew. Others who lived  _normal_ lives, instead of a constant waking nightmare—always straining, always fighting against some  _evil manifest_ , just trying to breathe in full and exhale the pressure. Forever yearning to breathe easy. 

With every setting sun, Dean braced himself—because when nighttime fell, so did the shadow over his soul. The Mark was slowly poisoning him, he could feel it. And when darkness descended he could feel its hold on him tighten—a phantom hand squeezing his heart, a weight holding down his limbs, leaden blood trudging thick and impatient through his veins. 

He felt heavier at night. Everything felt heavier at night..

The lonely cricket slowed its song and Dean wondered if maybe it was dying. Maybe its time had come. Maybe it had been poisoned, too, from the pesticides in the lacklustre garden-beds, or the ashtray where it had nested for the night. He wondered what dosage of dangerous chemicals was too much for a little cricket to bear, and what that would equate to in a human.

If one ounce of nicotine could overload its little heart, would it take a hundred times that to kill a human? And what about someone like Dean—someone as cursed as he was—could he survive ten times  _that_? Because surely to survive wouldn’t be a blessing, but a prolonging of suffering: alone and in pain, unable to die yet not quite alive, separate from the world and all its spark of life..

He spared a brief, sympathetic thought of the cricket, but then remembered its suffering would soon be over, and wasn’t that just wonderful for it?— _peace, in the end_.

He also remembered that, for the cricket’s lack of awareness, it didn’t  _knowingly_  poison itself. Whereas Dean  _should_  have known better. He took The Mark from Cain willingly, with no real thought to the consequences, the possible lasting, worsening effects.

He spared another thought to his brother: if Sam had been with him that day he might not have accepted the risk, the burden, because Sam  _did_  know better. Perhaps not always for himself, but oftentimes for Dean. He was Dean’s conscience, his  _Jiminy Cricket_ , wise and helpful at crucial points in his life. 

That sounded about right. 

Sam was the cricketl; unknowingly poisoned.

Dean himself was the  _pesticide_ , that manmade poison with good intentions but which just ended up causing more suffering and death. His life was the  _ashtray_ , polluting everything it came in contact with, stealing away the right of easy, enriching lungfuls of air. 

He wasn’t the only one who was cursed. Sam was cursed for having Dean as his brother. 

And he wasn’t the only one who drew weighty breaths in the oppressive darkness. Sam struggled against the constant shadow Dean descended on him with every bad move he made, every poor decision and reckless mistake.

The chirps lulled into nothing.. 

Dean missed his brother. But maybe this time apart would allow Sam the chance to work the poison— _his_ poison—out of his system, to breathe some much-needed and much-deserved fresh air. 

Whatever The Mark had in store for Dean, and whether he truly believed he deserved to bear it alone or not, he would damn well try. And for as long as he was able, he would keep away from Sam—just keep his little brother breathing. 

Even if that meant Dean would suffer alone, in silence.

**Author's Note:**

> ♡ also on tumblr @ [theheartchoice](http://theheartchoice.tumblr.com/post/172597916663/poison-s9) ♡


End file.
